current events

Why I celebrate Christmas

PNRJ core principles, current events, personal , , , , , , ,

Dec 22 JDN 2460667

In my last several posts I’ve been taking down religion and religious morality. So it might seem strange, or even hypocritical, that I would celebrate Christmas, which is widely regarded as a Christian religious holiday. Allow me to explain.

First of all, Christmas is much older than Christianity.

It had other names before: Solstice celebrations, Saturnalia, Yuletide. But human beings of a wide variety of cultures around the world have been celebrating some kind of winter festival around the solstice since time immemorial.

Indeed, many of the traditions we associate with Christmas, such as decorating trees and having an—ahem—Yule log, are in fact derived from pre-Christian traditions that Christians simply adopted.

The reason different regions have their own unique Christmas traditions, such as Krampus, is most likely that these regions already had such traditions surrounding their winter festivals which likewise got absorbed into Christmas once Christianity took over. (Though oddly enough, Mari Lwyd seems to be much more recent, created in the 1800s.)

In fact, Christmas really has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

It’s wildly improbable that Jesus was born in December. Indeed, we have very little historical or even Biblical evidence of his birth date. (What little we do have strongly suggests it wasn’t in winter.)

The date of December 25 was almost certainly chosen in order to coincide—and therefore compete—with the existing Roman holiday of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (literally, “the birthday of the invincible sun”), an ancient solstice celebration. Today the Winter Solstice is slightly earlier, but in the Julian calendar it was December 25.

In the past, Christians have sometimes suppressed Christmas celebration.

Particularly during the 17th century, most Protestant sects, especially the Puritans, regarded Christmas as a Catholic thing, and therefore strongly discouraged their own adherents from celebrating it.

Besides, Christmas is very secularized at this point.

Many have bemoaned its materialistic nature—and even economists have claimed it is “inefficient”—but gift-giving has become a central part of the celebration of Christmas, despite it being a relatively recent addition. Santa Claus has a whole fantasy magic narrative woven around him that is the source of countless movies and has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

I celebrate because we celebrate.

When I celebrate Christmas, I’m also celebrating Saturnalia, and Yuletide, and many of the hundreds of other solstice celebrations and winter festivals that human cultures around the world have held for thousands of years. I’m placing myself within a grander context, a unified human behavior that crosses lines of race, religion, and nationality.

Not all cultures celebrate the Winter Solstice, but a huge number do—and those that don’t have their own celebrations which often involve music and feasting and gift-giving too.

So Merry Christmas, and Happy Yuletide, and Io Saturnalia to you all.

Trump Won. Now what?

PNRJ current events, politics, tribal paradigm , , , , , ,

Nov 10 JDN 2460625

How did Trump win?

After the election results were announced, one of the first things I saw on social media, aside from the shock and panic among most of my friends and acquaintances, was various people trying to explain what happened this election by some flaw in Kamala Harris or her campaign.

They said it was the economy—even though the economy was actually very good, with the lowest unemployment we’ve had in decades and inflation coming back to normal. Real wages have been rising quickly, especially at the bottom! Most economists agree that inflation will be worse under Trump than it would have been under Harris.

They said it was too much identity politics, or else that Black and Latino men felt their interests were being ignored—somehow it was both of those things.

They said it was her support of Israel in its war crimes in Gaza—even though Trump supports them even more.

They said she was too radical on trans issues—even though most Americans favor anti-discrimination laws protecting trans people.

They said Harris didn’t campaign well—even though her campaign was obviously better organized than Trump’s (or Hillary Clinton’s).

They said it was too much talk about abortion, alienating pro-lifers—even though the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal in all or most cases.

They said that Biden stepped down too late, and she didn’t have enough time—even though he stepped down as soon as he showed signs of cognitive decline, and her poll numbers were actually better early on in the campaign.

They said that Harris was wrong to court endorsements by Republicans—even though endorsements form the other side are exactly the sort of thing that usually convinces undecided voters.

None of these explanations actually hold much water.

BUT EVEN IF THEY DID, IT WOULDN’T MATTER.

I could stipulate that Harris and her campaign had all of these failures and more. I could agree that she’s the worst candidate the Democrats have fielded in decades. (She wasn’t.)

THE ALTERNATIVE WAS DONALD TRUMP.

Trump is so terrible that he utterly eclipses any failings that could reasonably be attributed to Harris. He is racist, fascist, authoritarian, bigoted, incompetent, narcissistic, egomaniacal, corrupt, a liar, a cheat, an insurrectionist, a sexual predator, and a convicted criminal. He shows just as much cognitive decline as Biden did, but no one on his side asked him to step down because of it. His proposed tariffs would cause massive economic harm for virtually no benefit, and his planned mass deportations are a human rights violation (and also likely an economic disaster). He will most likely implement some variant of Project 2025, which is absolutely full of terrible, dangerous policies. Historians agree he was one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had.

Indeed, Trump is so terrible that there really can’t be any good reasons to re-elect him. We are left only with bad reasons.

I know of two, and both of them are horrifying.


The first is that Kamala Harris is a woman of color, and a lot of Americans just weren’t willing to put a woman of color in charge. Indeed, sexism seems to be a stronger effect here than racism, because Barack Obama made it but Hillary Clinton didn’t.

The second is that Trump and other Republicans successfully created a whole propaganda system that allows them to indoctrinate millions of people with disinformation. Part of their strategy involves systematically discrediting all mainstream sources, from journalists to scientists, so that they can replace the truth with whatever lies they want.

It was this disinformation that convinced millions of Americans that the economy was in shambles when it was doing remarkably well, convinced them that crime is rising when it is actually falling, convinced them that illegal immigrants were eating people’s pets. Once Republicans had successfully made people doubt all mainstream sources, they could simply substitute whatever beliefs were most convenient for their goals.

Democrats and Republicans are no longer operating with the same set of facts. I’m not claiming that Democrats are completely without bias, but there is a very clear difference: When scientists and journalists report that a widely-held belief by Democrats is false, most Democrats change their beliefs. When the same happens to Republicans, they just become further convinced that scientists and journalists are liars.

What happens now?

In the worst-case scenario, Trump will successfully surround himself with enough sycophants to undermine the checks and balances in our government and actually become an authoritarian dictator. I still believe that this is unlikely, but I can’t rule it out. I am certain that he would want to do this if he thought he could pull it off. (His own chief of staff has said so!)

Even if that worst-case doesn’t come to pass, things will still be very bad for millions of people. Immigrants will be forcibly removed from their homes. Trans people will face even more discrimination. Abortion may be banned nationwide. We may withdraw our support from Ukraine, and that may allow Russia to win the war. Environmental regulations will be repealed. Much or all of our recent progress at fighting climate change could be reversed. Voter suppression efforts will intensify. Yet more far-right judges will be appointed, and they will make far-right rulings. And tax cuts on the rich will make our already staggering, unsustainable inequality even worse.

Indeed, it’s not clear that this will be good even for the people who voted for Trump. (Of course it will be good for Trump himself and his closest lackeys.) The people who voted based on a conviction that the economy was bad won’t see the economy improve. The people who felt ignored by the Democrats will continue to be even more ignored by the Republicans. The people who were tired of identity politics aren’t going to make us care any less about racism and sexism by electing a racist misogynist. The working-class people who were voting against “liberal elites” will see their taxes raised and their groceries more expensive and their wages reduced.

I guess if people really hate immigrants and want them gone, they may get their wish when millions of immigrants are taken from their homes. And the rich will be largely insulated from the harms, while getting those tax cuts they love so much. So that’s some kind of benefit at least.

But mostly, this was an awful outcome, and the next four years will be progressively more and more awful, until hopefully—hopefully—Trump leaves office and we get another chance at something better. That is, if he hasn’t taken over and become a dictator by then.

What can we do to make things less bad?

I’m seeing a lot of people talking about grassroots organizing and mutual aid. I think these are good things, but honestly I fear they just aren’t going to be enough. The United States government is the most powerful institution in the world, and we have just handed control of it over to a madman.

Maybe we will need to organize mass protests. Maybe we will need to take some kind of radical direct action. I don’t know what to do. This all just feels so overwhelming.

I don’t want to give in to despair. I want to believe that we can still make things better. But right now, things feel awfully bleak.

Please, don’t let Trump win this

PNRJ core principles, current events, ethics, politics , , , , , , , , ,

Oct 20 JDN 2460604

It’s almost time for the Presidential election in the United States. Right now, the race is too close to call; as of writing this post, FiveThirtyEight gives Harris a 53% chance of winning, and Trump a 46% chance.

It should not be this close. It should never have been this close. We have already seen what Trump is like in office, and it should have made absolutely no one happy. He is authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, and narcissistic, and lately he’s starting to show signs of cognitive decline. He is a convicted felon and was involved in an attempted insurrection. His heavy-handed trade tariffs would surely cause severe economic damage both here and abroad, and above all, he wants to roll back rights for millions of Americans.

Almost anyone would be better than Trump. Harris would be obviously, dramatically better in almost every way. Yet somehow Trump is still doing well in the polls, and could absolutely still win this.

Please, do everything you can to stop that from happening.

Donate. Volunteer. Get out the vote. And above all, vote.

Part of the problem is our two-party system, which comes ultimately from our plurality voting system. As RangeVoting.org has remarked, our current system is basically the worst possible system that can still be considered democratic. Range voting would be clearly the best system, but failing that, at least we could have approval voting, or some kind of ranked-choice system. Only voting for a single candidate causes huge, fundamental flaws in representation, especially when it comes to candidate cloning: Multiple similar candidates that people like can lose to a single candidate that people dislike, because the vote gets split between them.

In fact, that’s almost certainly what happened with Trump: The only reason he won the primary the first time was that he had a small group of ardent supporters, while all the other candidates were similar and so got the mainstream Republican vote split between them. (Though it looks like the second time around he’d still win even if all the other similar candidates were consolidated—which frankly horrifies me.)

But it isn’t just our voting system. The really terrifying thing about Trump is how popular he is among Republicans. Democrats hate him, but Republicans love him. I have tried talking with Republican family members about what they like about Trump, and they struggle to give me a sensible answer. It’s not his personality or his competence (how could it be?). For the most part, it wasn’t even particular policies he supports. It was just this weird free-floating belief that he was a good President and would be again.

There was one major exception to that: Single-issue voters who want to ban abortion. For these people, the only thing that matters is that Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. I don’t know what to say to such people, since it seems so obvious to me that (1) a total abortion ban is too extreme, even if you want to reduce the abortion rate, (2) there are so many other issues that matter aside from abortion; you can’t simply ignore them all, (3) several other Republican candidates are equally committed to banning abortion but not nearly as corrupt or incompetent, and (4) the Supreme Court has already been appointed; there’s nothing more for Trump to do in that department that he hasn’t already done. But I guess there is at least something resembling a coherent policy preference here, if a baffling one.

Others also talked about his ideas on trade and immigration, but they didn’t seem to have a coherent idea of what a sensible trade or immigration policy looks like. They imagined that it was a reasonable thing to simply tariff all imports massively or expel all immigrants, despite the former being economically absurd and the latter being a human rights violation (and also an economic disaster). I guess that also counts as a policy preference, but it’s not simply baffling; it’s horrifying. I don’t know what to say to these people either.

But maybe that’s a terror I need to come to terms with: Some people don’t like Trump in spite of his terrible policy ideas; they like him because of them. They want a world where rights are rolled back for minorities and LGBT people and (above all) immigrants. They want a world where global trade is shut down and replaced by autarky. They imagine that these changes will somehow benefit them, even when all the evidence suggests that it would do nothing of the sort.

I have never feared Trump himself nearly so much as I fear the people of a country that could elect him. And should we re-elect him, I will fear the people of this country even more.

Please, don’t let that happen.

Why are groceries so expensive?

PNRJ current events, macroeconomics, politics, public policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 18 JDN 2460541

There has been unusually high inflation the past few years, mostly attributable to the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. But groceries in particular seem to have gotten especially more expensive. We’ve all felt it: Eggs, milk, and toilet paper especially soared to extreme prices and then, even when they came back down, never came down all the way.

Why would this be?

Did it involve supply chain disruptions? Sure. Was it related to the war in Ukraine? Probably.

But it clearly wasn’t just those things—because, as the FTC recently found, grocery stores have been colluding and price-gouging. Large grocery chains like Walmart and Kroger have a lot of market power, and they used that power to raise prices considerably faster than was necessary to keep up with their increased costs; as a result, they made record profits. Their costs did genuinely increase, but they increased their prices even more, and ended up being better off.

The big chains were also better able to protect their own supply chains than smaller companies, and so the effects of the pandemic further entrenched the market power of a handful of corporations. Some of them also imposed strict delivery requirements on their suppliers, pressuring them to prioritize the big companies over the small ones.

This kind of thing is what happens when we let oligopolies take control. When only a few companies control the market, prices go up, quality goes down, and inequality gets worse.

For far too long, institutions like the FTC have failed to challenge the ever tighter concentration of our markets in the hands of a small number of huge corporations.

And it’s not just grocery stores.

Our media is dominated by five corporations: Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, Sony, and Paramount.

Our cell phone service is 99% controlled by three corporations: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.

Our music industry is dominated by three corporations: Sony, Universal, and Warner.

Two-thirds of US airline traffic are in four airlines: American, Delta, Southwest, and United.

Nearly 40% of US commercial banking assets are controlled by just three banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup.

Do I even need to mention the incredible market share Google has in search—over 90%—or Facebook has in social media—over 50%?

And most of these lists used to be longer. Disney recently acquired 21st Century Fox. Viacom recently merged with CBS and then became Paramount. Universal recently acquired EMI. Our markets aren’t simply alarmingly concentrated; they have also been getting more concentrated over time.

Institutions like the FTC are supposed to be protecting us from oligopolies, by ensuring that corporations can’t merge and acquire each other once they reach a certain market share. But decades of underfunding and laissez-faire ideology have weakened these institutions. So many mergers that obviously shouldn’t have been allowed were allowed, because no regulatory agency had the will and the strength to stop them.

The good news is that this is finally beginning to change: The FTC has recently (finally!) sued Google for maintaining a monopoly on Internet search. And among grocery stores in particular, the FTC is challenging Kroger’s acquisition of Albertson’s—though it remains unclear whether that challenge will succeed.

Hopefully this is a sign that the FTC has found its teeth again, and will continue to prosecute anti-trust cases against oligopolies. A lot of that may depend on who ends up in the White House this November.

Can Kamala Harris win this?

PNRJ current events, politics

Aug 4 JDN 2460527

This election is historic in several ways.

First of all, there’s Trump, who is now on record saying “after this one, you won’t have to vote anymore”. (His own side is trying to downplay this, but does that not sound incredibly authoritarian? Is he not suggesting that there will be no future elections, or that all future elections will be shams? How else are we supposed to interpret this?)

Second, we have had a major candidate for President suddenly step down in the middle of the campaign, leaving his Vice President to take on the nomination. No previous candidate has ever stepped down this late in the race.

But third and perhaps most importantly, we have a woman of color running as a major party candidate for President of the United States. Even if she loses, it will be historic. And if she wins, it will be even more so.

I do think that Biden was right to step down. The narrative had swung too hard against him: People saw him as old, weak, even senile. Whether or not this was really an accurate assessment of his abilities, I honestly don’t know. But I do know that enough people believed it that it was clearly hurting his chances of winning the election—and when the alternative is Trump, that’s just not something we could afford.

But now the big question arises:

Can Kamala Harris succeed where Joe Biden could not?

It definitely seems like voters are more passionate about Harris than they were about Biden; maybe America wasn’t ready for yet another rich White straight male Anglo-Saxon Protestant President. (Or at least maybe Democrats weren’t; Republicans don’t seem to mind Trump.)

But will that passion really translate to electoral success where we need it most?

A more objective answer comes from looking at poll numbers: Are hers better than his? Yes, they are, by several percentage points—but it still looks like a tossup with Trump. Depending on which poll you read on which day, Harris may be up by several points—or Trump may be ahead by a few points instead. Basically, we are within margin of error here.

This is scary particularly because of the idiocy of the Electoral College; right now it looks like the most likely scenario is that Harris wins the popular vote, but Trump still becomes President—just like what happened with Hillary Clinton the first time Trump won.

The Electoral College was supposed to prevent “tyranny of the majority” by stopping authoritarian populist demagogues from taking office. Since it literally caused exactly the outcome it was designed to prevent, it has clearly failed, and needs to be destroyed. Seriously, we need to enact the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact ASAP. It would only take a few more states—or one big state—to put us over the threshold and render the Electoral College irrelevant.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem very likely to happen in time for November. Which means that in order to win this election, we have to not only get the most votes; we also need to win enough swing states. It’s incredibly stupid and undemocratic that this is the case, but it is the case. (Frankly, it’s stupid and undemocratic that we have a single first-past-the-post vote instead of ranked-choice or range voting; but that’s also something we seem to be stuck with for the time being.)

A lot of this is going to come down to who Harris chooses as her running mate. Fortunately, Trump seems to have chosen a pretty bad choice in J. D. Vance; that’s good news for Democrats, and ultimately good news for America. Harris is a lot more competent than Trump, and will almost certainly choose a better running mate.

And perhaps that, in the end, is the greatest reason to have hope:

Competence and reasonableness have advantages.

What’s the deal with Trump supporters?

PNRJ core principles, current events, politics, tribal paradigm , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jul 28 JDN 2460520


I have never understood how this Presidential election is a close one. On the one hand, we have a decent President with many redeeming qualities who has done a great job, but is getting old; on the other hand, we have a narcissistic, authoritarian con man (who is almost as old). It should be obvious who the right choice is here.

And yet, half the country disagrees. I really don’t get it. Other Republican candidates actually have had redeeming qualities, and I could understand why someone might support them; but Trump has basically none.

I have even asked some of my relatives who support Trump why they do, what they see in him, and I could never get a straight answer.

I now think I know why: They don’t want to admit the true answer.

Political scientists have been studying this, and they’ve come to some very unsettling conclusions. The two strongest predictors of support for Trump are authoritarianism and hatred of minorities.

In other words, people support Trump not in spite of what makes him awful, but because of it. They are happy to finally have a political publicly supporting their hateful, bigoted views. And since they believe in authoritarian hierarchy, his desire to become a dictator doesn’t worry them; they may even welcome it, believing that he’ll use that power to hurt the right people. They like him because he promises retribution against social change. He also uses a lot of fear-mongering.

This isn’t the conclusion I was hoping for. I wanted there to be something sympathetic, some alternative view of the world that could be reasoned with. But when bigotry and authoritarianism are the main predictors of a candidate’s support, it seems that reasonableness has pretty much failed.

I wanted there to be something I had missed, something I wasn’t seeing about Trump—or about Biden—that would explain how good, reasonable people could support the former over the latter. But the data just doesn’t seem to show anything. There is an urban/rural divide; there is a generational divide; and there is an educational divide. Maybe there’s something there; certainly I can sympathize with old people in rural areas with low education. But by far the best way to tell whether someone supports Trump is to find out whether they are racist, sexist, xenophobic, and authoritarian. How am I supposed to sympathize with that? Where can we find common ground here?

There seems to be something deep and primal that motivates Trump supporters: Fear of change, tribal identity, or simply anger. It doesn’t seem to be rational. Ask them what policies Trump has done or plans to do that they like, and they often can’t name any. But they are certain in their hearts that he will “Make America Great Again”.

What do we do about this? We can win this election—maybe—but that’s only the beginning. Somehow we need to root out the bigotry that drives support for Trump and his ilk, and I really don’t know how to do that.

I don’t know what else to say here. This all feels so bleak. This election has become a battle for the soul of America: Are we a pluralistic democracy that celebrates diversity, or are we a nation of racist, sexist, xenophobic authoritarians?

Did we push too hard, too fast for social change? Did we leave too many people behind, people who felt coerced into compliance rather than persuaded of our moral correctness? Is this a temporary backlash that we can bear as the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice? Or is this the beginning of a slow and agonizing march toward neo-fascism?

I have never feared Trump himself nearly so much as I fear a nation that could elect him—especially one that could re-elect him.

People need permission to disagree

PNRJ core principles, current events, ethics, politics, tribal paradigm , , , , , , ,

Jul 21 JDN 2460513

Obviously, most of the blame for the rise of far-right parties in various countries has to go to the right-wing people who either joined up or failed to stop their allies from joining up. I would hope that goes without saying, but it probably doesn’t, so there, I said it; it’s mostly their fault.

But there is still some fault to go around, and I think we on the left need to do some soul-searching about this.

There is a very common mode of argumentation that is popular on the left, which I think is very dangerous:

“What? You don’t already agree with [policy idea]? You bigot!”

Often it’s not quite that blatant, but the implication is still there: If you don’t agree with this policy involving race, you’re a racist. If you don’t agree with this policy involving transgender rights, you’re a transphobe. If you don’t agree with this policy involving women’s rights, you are a sexist. And so on.

I understand why people think this way. But I also think it has pushed some people over to the right who might otherwise have been possible to persuade to our own side.

And here comes the comeback, I know:

“If being mistreated turns you into a Nazi, you were never a good ally to begin with.”

Well, first of all, not everyone who was pushed away from the left became a full-blown Nazi. Some of them just stopped listening to us, and started listening to whatever the right wing was saying instead.

Second, life is more complicated than that. Most people don’t really have well-defined political views, believe it or not. Most people sort of form their political views on the spot based on whoever else is around them and who they hear talking the loudest. Most swing voters are really low-information voters who really don’t follow politics and make up their minds based on frankly stupid reasons.

And with this in mind, the mere fact that we are pushing people away with our rhetoric means that we are shifting what those low-information voters hear—and thereby giving away elections to the right.

When people disagree about moral questions, isn’t someone morally wrong?

Yes, by construction. (At least one must be; possibly everyone is.)

But we don’t always know who is wrong—and generally speaking, everyone goes into a conversation assuming that they themselves are right. But our ultimate goal of moral conversation is to get more people to be right and fewer people to be wrong, yes? If we treat it as morally wrong to disagree in the first place,we are shutting down any hope of reaching that goal.

Not everyone knows everything about everything.

That may seem perfectly obvious to you, but when you leap from “disagree with [policy]” to “bigot”, you are basically assuming the opposite. You are assuming that whoever you are speaking with knows everything you know about all the relevant considerations of politics and social science, and the only possible reason they could come to a different conclusion is that they have a fundamentally different preference, namely, they are a bigot.

Maybe you are indeed such an enlightened individual that you never get any moral questions wrong. (Maybe.) But can you really expect everyone else to be like that? Isn’t it unfair to ask that of absolutely everyone?

This is why:

People need permission to disagree.

In order for people to learn and grow in their understanding, they need permission to not know all the answers right away. In order for people to change their beliefs, they need permission to believe something that might turn out to be wrong later.


This is exactly the permission we are denying when we accuse anyone we disagree with of being a bigot. Instead of continuing the conversation in the hopes of persuading people to our point of view, we are shutting the conversation down with vitriol and name-calling.

Try to consider this from the opposite perspective.

You enter a conversation about an important political or moral issue. You hear their view expressed, and then you express your own. Immediately, they start accusing you of being morally defective, a racist, sexist, homophobic, and/or transphobic bigot. How likely are you to continue that conversation? How likely are you to go on listening to this person? How likely are you to change your mind about the original political issue?

In fact, might you even be less likely to change your mind than you would have been if you’d just heard their view expressed and then ended the conversation? I think so. I think just respectfully expressing an alternative view pushes people a little—not a lot, but a little—in favor of whatever view you have expressed. It tells them that someone else who is reasonable and intelligent believes X, so maybe X isn’t so unreasonable.

Conversely, when someone resorts to name-calling, what does that do to your evaluation of their views? They suddenly seem unreasonable. You begin to doubt everything they’re saying. You may even try to revise your view further away out of spite (though this is clearly not rational—reversed stupidity is not intelligence).

Think about that, before you resort to name-calling your opponents.

But now I know you’re thinking:

“But some people really are bigots!”

Yes, that’s true. And some of them may even be the sort of irredeemable bigot you’re imagining right now, someone for whom no amount of conversation could ever change their mind.

But I don’t think most people are like that. In fact, I don’t think most bigots are like that. I think even most people who hold bigoted views about whatever population could in fact be persuaded out of those views, under the right circumstances. And I think that the right circumstances involves a lot more patient, respectful conversation than it does angry name-calling. For we are all Judy Hopps.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it doesn’t matter how patiently we argue. But it’s still morally better to be respectful and kind, so I’m going to do it.

You have my permission to disagree.

The worst is not inevitable

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Jul 14 JDN 2460506

As I write this, the left has just won two historic landslide victories: In France, where a coalition of left-wing parties set aside their differences and prevailed; and in the UK, where the Labour Party just curb-stomped all competition.

Many commentators had been worried that the discredited center-right parties in these countries had left a power vacuum that would be filled by far-right parties like France’s National Rally, but this isn’t what happened. Voters showed up to the polls, and they voted out the center-right all right; but what they put in its place was the center-left, not the far-right.

The New York Times is constitutionally incapable of celebrating anything, so they immediately turned to worries that “turnout was low” and this indicates “an unhappy Britain”. Honestly this seems to be a general failing of journalists: They can’t ever say anything is good. Their entire view of the world is based around “if it bleeds, it leads”. I’m assuming this has something to do with incentives created by the market of news consumers, but it also seems to be an entrenched social norm among journalists themselves. The world must be getting worse, in every way, or if it’s obviously not, we don’t talk about those things—because good things just aren’t news. (Look no further than the fact we now have the lowest global homicide rates in the history of the human race. What, you didn’t realize we had that right now? Could that perhaps be because literally no news source even mentioned it, ever?)

Now, to be fair, turnout was low, and far-right parties did win some representation, and any kind of sudden political shift indicates some kind of public dissatisfaction… but for goodness’ sake, can we take the win for once?

These elections are proof that the free world’s slide into far-right authoritarianism doesn’t have to be inevitable. We can fight it, we are fighting it—and sometimes, we actually win.

So let’s not give up hope in the United States, either. Yes, polls of the Biden/Trump election don’t look great right now; Trump seems to have a slight lead, and it’s way too close for comfort. But we don’t need to roll over and die. The left can win, when we band together well enough; and if France and Britain can pull it off, I don’t see why we can’t too.

And don’t tell me they had way better candidates. The new UK Prime Minister is not a particularly appealing or charismatic candidate. I frankly don’t even like him. He either is a TERF, or is at least willing to capitulate to them. (He also underestimates the number of trans women by about an order of magnitude.) But he won, because the Labour Party won, and he happened to be the Labour Party leader at the time.

Biden is old. Sure. So is Trump. And if it turns out that Biden is really unhealthy, guess what? That means he’ll die or resign and we get a woman of color as President instead. I don’t see eye-to-eye with Kamala Harris on everything, but I don’t see her taking office as a horrible outcome. It’s certainly a hundred times better than what happens if we let Trump win.

Are there better candidates out there? Theoretically, sure. But unless one of them manages to win nomination by one of the two leading parties, that doesn’t matter. Because in a first-past-the-post voting system, you either vote for one of the top two, or you waste your vote. I’m sorry. It sucks. I want a new voting system too. I know exactly which one we could use that would be a hundred times better. But we’re not going to get it by refusing to vote altogether.

We might get a better voting system by voting strategically for candidates who are open to the idea—which at this juncture clearly means Democrats, not Republicans. (At this point in history, Republicans don’t seem entirely convinced that we should decide things democratically in the first place.)There are also other forms of activism we can use, independent of voting. But not voting isn’t a form of activism, and we should stop acting like it is. Not voting is the lazy, selfish, default option. It’s what you’d do if you were a neoclassical rational agent who cares not in the least for his fellow human beings. You should never be proud of not voting. You’re not sending a message; you’re shirking your civic responsibility.

Voting isn’t writing a love letter. It isn’t signing a form endorsing everything a candidate has ever done or ever will do. If you think of it that way, you’re going to never want to vote—and thus you’re going to give up the most important power you have as a citizen of a democracy.

Voting is a decision. It’s choosing one alternative over another. Like any decision in the real world, there will almost never be a perfect option. There will only be better or worse options. Sometimes, even, you’ll feel that there are only bad options, and you are choosing the least-bad option. But you still have to choose the least-bad option, because literally everything else is worse—including doing nothing.

So get out there and try to help Biden win. Not because you love Biden, but because it’s your civic duty. And if enough people do it, we can still win this.

Reflections on fatherhood

PNRJ current events, personal, tribal paradigm , , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 24 JDN 2460485

I am writing this on Father’s Day, which has become something of a morose occasion for me—or at least a bittersweet one. I had always thought that I would become a father while my own father were still around, that my children would have a full set of grandparents. But that isn’t how my life has turned out.

Humans are unusual, among mammals, in having fathers. Yes, biologically, there is always a male involved. But most male mammals really don’t do much of the parenting; they leave that task more or less entirely to the females. So while every mammal has a mother, most really don’t have a father.

We’re also unusual in just how much parenting we need to survive. All babies are vulnerable, but human babies are exceptionally so. Most mammals are born at least able to walk. Even other altricial mammals are not as underdeveloped at birth as we are. In many ways, it seems that we come out of the womb before we’re really done, in order to spare our mothers an impossible birth.

And it is most likely due to this state of exceptional need that we became creatures of exceptional caring. Fatherhood is one of the clearest examples of this: Our males devote enormous effort to the care and support of their offspring, comparable to the efforts that our females devote (though, even in modern societies, not equal).

It’s ironic that many people don’t think of humans as a uniquely caring species. Some even seem to imagine that we are uniquely violent and cruel. But violence and cruelty is everywhere in nature; it’s the lack of it that needs explained. Even bonobos are not as kind and cooperative as previously imagined, and eusocial species don’t generally cooperate outside their hives; humans may in fact be the most cooperative animal.

What about war? Is that not uniquely human, and thus proof of our inherent violence? Wars are indeed unusual in nature (though not nonexistent: ants and apes are both prone to them), but the part that’s unusual is not the violence—it’s the coordination. Almost all animals are violent to greater or lesser degree. But it’s the rare ones who are cooperative enough to be violent en masse. And most human societies are at peace with most of their neighbors most of the time.

In fact I think it is the fact that we are so caring that makes us so aware of our own cruelty. A truly cruel species would be far more violent, but also wouldn’t care about how violent it was. It wouldn’t feel guilt or shame about being so violent. The reason we feel so ashamed of our own violence is that we are capable of imagining peace.

And part of why we are able to imagine a more caring world is that (most of us) are born into one, in the hands of our mothers and fathers. When we become adults, we find ourselves longing for the peace and security we felt in childhood. And while caring is largely seen as a mother’s job, security is very much seen as a father’s. We feel so helpless and exposed when we grow up, because we were so protected and safe as children.

My father certainly taught me a great deal about caring—caring so much, perhaps too much. I suppose I don’t actually know how much of it he actually taught me, versus how much was encoded in genes I got from him; but I do know that I grew up to be just like him in so many ways, both good and bad—so kind, so loyal, so loving, but also so wounded, so aggrieved, so hopeless. My father was more caring than anyone else I have ever known. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and now so do I. My father died without achieving most of his lifelong dreams. One of my greatest fears is that I will do the same.

Being in a same-sex marriage has also radically changed my relationship with fatherhood. It’s no longer something that can happen to me by accident, or something that would more or less end up happening on its own if we simply stopped fighting it. It is now something I must actively choose, a commitment I must make, a task I must willfully devote myself toward. And so far, it has never seemed like the right time to take that leap of faith. Another great fear of mine is that it never will.

Life is a succession of tomorrows that turn all too quickly into yesterdays, of could-bes that fade into could-have-beens, of shoulds that shrivel into should-haves. The possibilities are vast, but not limitless; more and more limits get imposed as time goes on, until at last death imposes the most final limit of all.

I don’t want my life to pass me by while I’m waiting for something better that never comes. But I clearly can’t be satisfied with where I am now, and I don’t want to give up on all my dreams. How do I know what I should fight for, and what I should give up on?

I wish I could ask my father for advice.

Go ahead and identify as a season

PNRJ core principles, current events, ethics, politics, tribal paradigm , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 2 JDN 2460464

A few weeks back, Fox News was running the story that “kids today are identifying as seasons instead of genders”. I suspected that by “kids today” they meant “one particular person on the Internet”, but in fact it was even worse than that; the one person on the Internet they had used as an example hadn’t actually said what Fox claimed they said.

What they actually said was far more nuanced: It was basically that their fluid gender expression varied based on what kind of clothes they wear, which, naturally, varies with the seasons. So they end up feeling more masculine at certain times of year when they like to wear masculine clothing. Honestly, this would be pretty boring stuff if conservatives hadn’t blown it out of proportion.

But after thinking about it for awhile, I decided that I don’t even care if kids want to identify as seasons.

It seems silly. I don’t understand why you’d want to do it. It would probably always feel weird to me. (And what pronouns do you even use for someone who identifies as “summer”?)

But ultimately, it seems completely, utterly harmless. So if there are in fact kids—or adults—out there who really feel that they want to identify their gender with a season, I’m here to tell you now:

Go right ahead and do that.

It’s really astonishing just what upsets conservatives in this world. Poverty? No big deal. Climate change? Probably a hoax or something. War? That’s just how it goes. But kids with weird genders!? The horror! The horror!

I think the reasoning here goes something like this:

  1. Civilization is built upon social constructions.
  2. Social constructions rely upon consensus behavior.
  3. Consensus behavior relies upon shared norms.
  4. Challenging any shared norms challenges all shared norms.
  5. Challenging any norm will cause it to collapse.
  6. Challenging gender norms is challenging a shared norm.
  7. Therefore, challenging gender norms will cause civilization to collapse.

Premises 1 through 3 are true, though I suspect that phrases like “social construction” would actually not sit well with most conservatives. (Part of their whole shtick seems to be that if you simply admit that money, government, and national identity are socially constructed, that in itself will cause them to immediately and irretrievably collapse. Nevermind that I can tell you money is made up all day long, and you’ll still be able to spend it.)

Premise 6 is also true, indeed, nearly tautological.

And, indeed, the argument is valid; the conclusion would follow from the premises.

So of course we come to the two premises that aren’t valid.


Premise 4 is wrong because you can challenge some norms but not others. I have yet to see anyone seriously challenge the norm against murder, for example. Nor does it even seem especially popular to challenge the norm in favor of democratic voting. But those are the kind of norms that actually sustain our civilization—not gender!

And premise 5 is even worse: A norm that can’t withstand even the slightest challenge is a norm that’s too weak to rely upon in the first place. If our civilization is to be strong and robust, it must allow its norms to be challenged, and those norms must be able to sustain themselves against the challenge. And indeed, if someone were to challenge the norm against murder or the norm in favor of democratic voting, there are plenty of things I could say to reply to that challenge. These norms aren’t arbitrary. They are strong because we can defend them.

What about gender norms? How defensible are they?

Well, uh… not very, it turns out.

The existence of sexes is defensible. Humans are sexually dimorphic, and the vast majority of humans can be readily classified as either male or female. Yes, there are exceptions even to that, and those people count too. But it’s a pretty useful and accurate heuristic to divide our species into two sexes.

But gender norms are so much more than this. We don’t simply recognize that some people have penises and others have vaginas. We attach all sorts of social and behavioral requirements to people based on their bodies, many of which are utterly arbitrary and culturally dependent. (Not all, to be fair: The stereotype that men are stronger than women is itself a very useful and accurate heuristic.)

Worse, we don’t merely assign stereotypes to predict behavior—which might sometimes be useful. We assign norms to control behavior. We tell people who deviate from those norms that they are bad. We abuse them, discriminate against them, ostracize them from society. This is really weird.

And for what?

What benefit do gender norms have?

I can see how norms against murder and in favor of democracy sustain our civilization. I’m just not seeing how norms against using she/her pronouns when you have a penis provide similar support.

It’s true, most human societies throughout history have had strict gender norms, so maybe that’s some sort of evidence in their favor… but how about we at least try not having them for awhile? Or just relax them here and there, a little at a time, see how it goes? If indeed it seems to result in some sort of disaster, we’ll stop doing it. But I don’t see how it could—and so far, it hasn’t.

I think maybe the problem here is that conservatives don’t understand how to evaluate norms, or perhaps even that norms can be evaluated. To them, a rule is a rule, and you never challenge the rules, because if there were no rules, there would be chaos and destruction.

But challenging some rules—or even all rules—doesn’t mean having no rules! It means checking to make sure our rules are good rules, and if they aren’t, changing them so they are.

And since I see no particular reason why having two genders is an especially good rule, go ahead, make up some more if you want.

Go ahead and identify if a season, if you really want to.